
Banquet 

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flibenu 



Rockaway Cocktail Thousand Islands 

Buffet Russe 

Celery Olives - Radishes 

POTAGE 

Creme of Lobster, Tivoli 

POISSONS 

Planked Lake Erie Whitefish, Mary Garden 

ENTREE 

Supremette of Chicken, Virginia 
Pommes Chips Corn Fritters 

PUNCH 
Sorbet Cardinal 

ROTI 

Larded Beef Tenderloin au Cresson 
Petit Pois Gourmets Pommes au Gratin 

ENTREMETS 

Bombe Alhambra Petit Fours 

Imported Roquefort and Swiss Cheese Crackers 

Demi Tasse 
By ttPt^^'"'^ 

March 3rd, 1913 






to 



^0a6t6 



"Cleoeland's Welcome" 



Sltrut. Qlnl. M\)x\ f. NtrI|olaon 

"Response' ' 



(gpttpral Oltiarlps ICtitg 

"Qeneral MacArthur'' 



(ipttpral Saaar §>. B{}n'maah 

"Heroic Literature of the Civil IVar" 



"Peace" 



(HoL IE. folk SnliuBon 

'/I /eu) words from the other aide' 



(Holnttpl W, iS. 5iant0rk 

TAe Tiecisive Battle of the Civil War' 



<^mnai Nelson A. Mxhs 



QIoaBt Ulaatpr 

John C. Hutchins 






Sljp Qlommamiipry-iu-OIlttpf 

Upon an invitation from the Cleveland Companions of the 
Ohio Commandery of the Loyal Legion to the Commandery-in- 
Chief to become their guests at the Tw^enty-eighth Annual 
Meeting of the Commandery-in-Chief, the same was accepted 
and upon the eighth and ninth of October, 1912, the Com- 
mandery-in-Chief met at the Hollenden Hotel , concludmg its 
business on the ninth. 

The Ohio Commandery of the Loyal Legion called its 
Stated Meeting for October in Cleveland on the Ninth of Oc- 
tober, and at 6 P. M. its session was held in the Hollenden 
Hotel. 

At 8 P. M. the doors of the banquet hall were open and 
some one hundred and seventy-five guests, with a large propor- 
tion of ladies— wives and daughters of the members, took their 
seats at the tables. 

Lieutenant John C. Hutchins of Cleveland acted as toast- 
master and after a sumptuous dinner, the following speakers 
were introduced. 



ADDRESSES 

The Toast- Master.IvIEutenant John C.Hutchins, Ladies 
and Companions: As the evening is already quite advanced and 
we have still considerable before us, it has seemed to me that I 
should be prompt in beginning the closing exercises of the even- 
ing. I don't mean by that that you who haven't finished your 
dinner shall stop eating, but you can occasionally turn towards 
the speakers' table even when eating. 

The presence of the Commatidery-in-Chief of the Military 
Order of the L,oyal lyegion of the United States here today and 
this evening, is the result of an invitation extended some time 
ago on behalf of the Cleveland Companions of the Ohio Com- 
mandery, through our late lamented Companion Major Kendall, 
who during his entire residence in Cleveland was foremost in the 
good work carried on by the Loyal Legion in Ohio and through" 
out the United States. We his survivors regret that he could not 
have been spared to have been with us liere this evening and to 
have occupied the position which has been assigned to me, which 
he could have filled with so much more credit than it is possible 
for me to exhibit But speaking for the Cleveland Companions 
of the Loj'al Legion, I wish to say to the Commander-in-Chief of 
the Lo>al Legion and to the Companions generally here tonight 
that we feel proud in haviny: such an organization as this, with 
such a hi.siory, with such motives, present with us here in Cleve- 
land tonight. We bid you welcome, we are proud of you, we are 
glad to belong with you to this magnificent organization. 
[Applause.] 

Our young and very gifted Cleveland Mayor, Mr. Baker, had 
hoped to be with us this evening to speak a word ot welcome for 
Cleveland to the Military Order of the Loyal Legion. Engage- 
ments made for him by outside interested parties just at this 
crucial period in the history of the country, made it impossible 
for him to be here this evening; but fortunately we have with 
us, who will speak that word of welcome one of his most highly 
prized and most highly regarded cabinet officers, Director of 
Charities Harris R. Cooley, who will now speak a word of wel- 
come. [Applause.] 

5 



Dr. Harris R. Cooley— Mr. Toast-master, members of the 
Loyal Legion, and their guests and friends, I regret very much 
that Mayor Baker is not able to be present in person to welcome 
you to Cleveland. But I count it an honor that the pleasure 
has fallen to me to welcome you to our fair city. I want lo ex- 
plain to you that the weather bureau is managed at Washington 
and that the municipality of Cleveland has nothing to do with it. 

What memories are here tonight of the crisis which con- 
fronted our country, of the call which came to service, of the 
decision to obey that call, of the parting from friends and homes, 
of the going to the front, of the noise and strife of battle, of the 
wounded and of the dead — what memories are here tonight gath- 
ered under these gray hairs, about these tables! And then, when 
the war was over, and following the greatest of all our generals, 
came the words, "Let us have peace," and the blue and the grey 
came together not to fight, but they are here to dine in a fellow- 
ship I think unequaled in the history of the world — the people 
who led the battles have become the advocates of peace. 

And then there followed the growth and prosperity of our 
land, made possible by this sacrifice, a growth and prosperity 
beyond the dreams of all of our prophets of the past. 

But it is not simply to the past that we turn tonight. Your 
coming to Cleveland must have a message for the living present 
and for the future that is before us all. Not the things which 
have been done alone, but the spirit in which they were done, 
the spirit of loyalty and of heroism; and in behalf of our great 
city, its heroism, its loyalty, we are glad to welcome you and 
try to develop that same spirit which led you forth to give your lives 
for the sake of our country and our race. And we have heroism 
here? It is a part of my work to deal with the poor and unfor- 
tunate, and they come to our ofiice, making a brave struggle, 
women with families of children. Not long ago a woman with 
five children, the eldest eight years old, left a widow, came to 
our ofiice, and I said to her, "We can find homes for your chil" 
dren, if you are willing to give them up." She said, "I will not 
give them up and let them be separated." She went forth to 
make overalls at forty cents a dozen, to stand over the washtub 

6 



six days a week; and to my mind the little woman that goes out 
to work six days a week over the wash tub and to earn a living 
with the needle to keep her children together, is as brave as the 
man who marches to the sound of martial music to the cannon's 
mouth, with his comrades by his side. [Applause] It is a fel- 
lowship of our courage and bravery. We expect our policemen 
to risk their lives to protect us, if it is necessary. We expect 
our firemen to enter the burning building to bring out a child, 
though he knows the walls may fall upon him. We expect the 
captains of our steamships to put the women and the children off 
and to send the men to safety, and to stand upon their bridges 
while their boat goes down. We expect in certain departments 
of our life that men shall be actuated by those motives, and then 
we cross the line into what we call the business and industrial 
world, and we expect, we have expected every man to look out 
simply for himself. We have expected that he should think only 
of the things which he can do and get for himself: and in the golden 
age that is to come, this spirit of heroism is to reach into all 
departments of life, into industry and all the great enterprises, 
this same spirit which you bring to our city, and the coming day 
is to witness the captains of industr}^ not honored simply because 
they make the dividends, but honored because they produce the 
things which make for human happiness and for the betterment 
of human life. They are to be the soldiers of the commonweal. 

So we feel that it is not simply the past, not the glory of the 
past, but the spirit of the present, the spirit that is coming into 
our common lives more and more, and which is to transform our 
city and our country into abetter and a happier place, where there 
shall be more of liberty, freedom and fellowship in this common 
lifeofciurs. Emerson has somewhere said that "happy is the 
house that shelters a friend; it might well be built to shelter him a 
single day." Sometimes when the guests have been in our house 
and have gone, who have found that they left something of value, 
of pleasant memory, of inspiration. So we believe that your visit 
to Cleveland will l)ring to us the memories of the days of strife, 
of the great sacrifice that was made for our country's future, and 
that it will also bring a great spirit of heroism which gradually, 
in time, will permeate all life, so that we will know a great, 



broad, human fellowship of the loyal legion of all the children of 
men. In the name of the Mayor, and in the name of the five 
hundred thousand people of Cleveland, we are glad to welcome 
you to our city. [Applause.] 

The Toast-Master — The very able and for a long time 
executive officer of the Coramandery-in-Chief of the I^oyal 
Legion will in a few words respond to this speech of welcome — 
Colonel Nicholson. [Applause.] 

Colonel Nicholson — You want to give me a minute or 
two. Mr. Representative of his honor the Mayor, if I could 
repeat the expression of the gratification that the members of the 
Commandery-in-Chief have at your welcome, I would require my- 
self to speak with lips of fire and heart of flame. But I thank 
you, and I feel considerably like a very distinguished Senator of 
the United States who said, when I asked him what the Senator 
was doing, and filling, as I am, the place of the able and distin- 
guished Commander-in-Chief, he said, "I am rattling in the shoes 
of Charles Sumner." [Applause.] I am not going to say, sir, 
and I am not going to speak of your welcome, but I came to say 
to the greatest organization in this world a few words. I never 
had an opportunity, in all the thirty-three years of my Recorder- 
in-Chiefship to say to the Commandery of the State of Ohio, 
"Well done, thou good and faithful servant and expounders of a 
great and magnificent principle. I want to say to you what 
burns my heart and fills my eye. For when I stand in your pres- 
ence I feel like a man in a sanctuary, and I could take of my san- 
dals because I stand in a holy place and in a holy presence. I 
hear men say, when I meet them on the street and they speak of 
the war we have gone through and which I trust is happily closed 
in all the glory that comes to the flag we honor and that you, my 
comrades, fought under, they tell us that we of the Army of the 
Potomac, and of the Army of the Tennessee and of the Army of 
the Cumberland, who cut the broad swath with Sherman to the 
sea, from Chattanooga to Atlanta, and from Atlanta to Goldsboro 
and the final victory for the Union at Bentonville, they tell me 
that we are forgotten. I beg you, do not think so, but I urge 

8 



you to remember that as long as this government by the people, 
as said the immortal lyincoln, and for the people shall endure, 
that the deeds of the Union army will never be forgotten. [Ap- 
plause.] The nation may seem ungrateful, but it is not. Grad- 
ually, step by step, measured slowly but distinctly from Bunker 
Hill to Yorktown, made possible Vicksburg, Gettysburg and 
Appomattox, and a great people will bear in grateful memory 
that you made the goverment and the prosperity of today possi- 
ble by greater trials and greater tribulations than befell the army 
that won the success of the constitutional government in this 
country at Valley Forge in Pennsylvania When we read of the 
trials and the suffering which our comrades passed through, let 
us remember that in the great war in which we bore an honored 
part, two hundred and seventy-five thousand men died of disease, 
fifty-.^ix thousand from wounds in battle, and forty seven thou- 
sand from wounds received. With that history, my Companions, 
it is not possible for this country to forget. I think the proudest 
heritage that a man can have, and the greatest thing that he can 
give to his descendants, is the fact that he served in one of the 
great armits that made this government possible and, I pray God, 
perpetual. [Applause.] 

We cannot count the glories of those splendid years in which 
we all participated, but there still remain many witnesses of the 
fierce war which left half a million of graves and an untold 
amount of human pain and anguish, a million of widows and 
orphans left to struggle without the support of the strong arm on 
which they had a right to lean, of the toil of more than a hun- 
dred years leveled to the earth and destroyed forever. Yet we 
hear men of influence contend that all this should be forgotten. 
It has long since been forgiven; and some of the very men who 
caused this state of affairs share in the counsels of the govern- 
ment, and I would be the last man, my Comrades, to will it other- 
wise. They are now our equals in all the attributes of citizen- 
ship, they share in the common responsibility, and I am glad to 
bear witness that many of them manifest the most ardent desire 
to join in making the future more safe and glorious. We have 
welcomed them back into the family greup, as was the prodigal 
ton of old; and it might seem to some of our Union comrades 



that it has gone too far, to the prejudice of the remainder of the 
family who stood faithful for all the time. This is one of the 
great political questions now on trial, and for one I hope 
and pray that our old antagonists will have learned wisdom 
and by their acts prove to the world the sincerity of their pa- 
triotic declarations. Some of them have contended that because 
their motives were pure and honorable, they are entitled to the 
same measure of honor and glory as those who had the right on 
their side, and who by law and violence had to enforce submis- 
sion to the loyal and legitimate authority of the United States of 
America. There are such things as right and wrong, and when 
history is written, human actions must take their place in one or 
the other category. We claim that in the great war we of the 
Union armj^ were right, and our adversaries were wrong, [Ap- 
plause.] And no special pleading and no excuses and no per- 
sonal motives, however pure or specious, can change, my Com- 
panions, that verdict of history. [Applause ] I would not 
revive a single angry passion of that period, nor do I question 
the personal motives of our then antagonist?, but I do and ever 
will contest the proposition that we should tear from the history 
of our country the pages which record the great events of the 
soldiers and the sailors of the Union in 1861 to 1865. [Ap- 
plause.] They should stand there forever, as a warning to those 
who come after us, who, from passion or any human cause or 
pretext whatever, may undertake to destroy this government by 
violence. No, no, the dead heroes and their deeds are already 
recorded in that great book of time. Marble and brass will con- 
tinue to record tbem long, long, after we are gone, and in the 
language of our great leader. General Grant, "We nevtr will 
apologize for the deeds we did for the preservation of the Union 
in 1861 to 1865, [applause] but shall treasure up the memories 
and on every suitable occasion, as long as life lasts, will present 
them anew to the youth of this county as the noblest examples 
of heroism and patri'otism. For they saved this nation from 
absolute annihilation, or at the very least from a long period of 
war and anarchy. As said tlie great poet: 

■'Not by the power of commerce, art or pen 

Shall this great empire stand nor has it stood, 
But by the noble deeds of noble men. 

Heroic lives and heroes' blood outpoured." 

10 



Companions, in a few years the longest liver among us will 
be numbered with the dead. He is beyond the middle life who 
as a lad followed the flag amide the smoke and thunders of the 
the strife. Upon the heads of many of them, who were then fresh- 
lipped young men, the frosts of autumn are setting, and there 
are those among us upon whom age has already placed its seal 
of consecration. The recollection is not unmixed with, sadness, 
and we feel ourselves drawn, on occasions of this kind, closer 
and closer together. L,et us neglect no duty suggested or en- 
joined for the membership, but to the full measure of our ability 
cheerfully discharge every obligation resting .upon us. We are 
privileged, and he who claims connection with the IvCgion should 
carry himself nobly, for you bear upon your breasts a badge of 
distinction conferred neither by Fortune nor accident; and wear 
it honorably, and transmit it as a legacy to be cherished by those 
who come afterwards, even to the latest generation. Glorious 
things are in store for our land, and the harvest has not yet 
come. But if the seed so plentifully sown, the dearest blood of 
a people, be any augury of future yield, then should be a mighty, 
mighty ingathering at the end. And already Time begins to 
throw his mellow tints upon past terrors, the tramp of many feet, 
the hearty cheer, the wild charge, aud the lattle of the musketry 
and the dull booming of the far off gun, and the groans and the 
shrieks of the dying — they all come back, splendid and shadowy 
like the scenes of an old chronicle. Oh, who does not still 
behold those glorious legions, silent and shadowy, as they 
marched forth in War's magnificent array, and if the recollection 
of their devotion and their heroism elevates and expands, my 
Companions, our common humanity, none may measure the 
reward of the heroic dead, when balanced against the pain of the 
mother's heart riven with anguish for the fair-faced boy who 
came not home again. Deep has been the suffering, but it is the 
law of progress, and there is a mighty Hand which gathers the 
little in and the great. Never the actors at any stage of the 
world's progress know the results to be obtained through the 
trials, or the triumphs, or the sufferings of the people. What 
great deeds and what good ends of government shall be wrought 
out through our united land through the glory and suffering of 

the late war, none may presume, much less say. But let us not 

11 



doubt that in the time to come the philosopher and the historian 
shall behold and point to these terrific scenes and say, "Behold 
the Fruit!" And to them and by them can well be spoken the 
words of Henry the Fifth, who said on the eve of Agincourt, 
"But we, we in time shall be remembered, we few, we happy few, 
we band of brothers." [Applause.] 

The Toast-Master — On the 5th of September this year, 
that magnificent soldier, Arthur McArthur, then the Comman- 
der-in-Chief of the Loyal lyCgion, while addressing the surviving 
members of his old regiment in which he entered the service as 
a mere boy, was stricken and died, surrounded by his early com- 
panions in arms. Fortunately we have with us tonight a dis- 
tinguished soldier, a graceful orator, a prince of good fellows, 
who was a neighbor and intimate friend of General McArthur, 
who will talk to us a few moments about our late commander, 
McArthur. We will now hear from General Charles King of 
Wisconsin. [Applause.] 

General Charles King — Mr. Toast-master Companions, 
ladies and gentlemen, if I were to talk to you of McArthur, with- 
out confining myself to feome limit, the flood of reminiscence and 
recollection extending over these years would carry me far be- 
yond the alloted time. It is in mercy to you that I have reduced 
what I have to say to writing, and shall endeavor to cling, syl- 
lable by syllable, to that. To you who so patiently and so kindly 
listened this afternoon to the brief memorial that I was required 
to write in a very short time, between the morning and the after- 
noon session, I must ask indulgence, because here tonight I have 
again to refer to several matters spoken of this afternoon. Any 
memorial of McArthur would be incomplete without them. 

If I take you back to the early days of Milwaukee, it is that 
you may know something of the boyhood of him who so recently 
stood at the head of our roster. The young city, like Ceasar's 
Gaul, was divided into three parts, and the boys into numerous 
clans or crowds, and one of the most unpromising of these was 
that which gathered almost every evening at what was then 
called King's Corner, in the Seventh ward. It was a mischiev- 

12 



ous, merry-making crowd. It played foot-ball, town-ball, hunt 
the wolf, Tom, Tom pull away and other rough, unladylike games. 
It hated school, study, Sunday-go to-meeting, and about the 
only scriptural admonition that it ever heeded was, "Love one 
another". ''That boy of yours will go to perdition," said Mil- 
waukee's social empress, to my mother "if he is not promptly 
separated from the rest of those scamps." And so it happened 
in September, '58 I was torn from the old crowd and sent on to 
New York— or Columbia College. 

It simply illustrates the fallibility of human judgment. Of 
the fifty lads matriculated with me at Columbia, I recall not one 
that in affairs municipal, state or national ever achieved distinc- 
tion. Of the beloved twenty odd that four long earlier years, 
had been my constant companions, and the despair ol eastern - 
bred mammas, it is a surprising fact that two became etriinent in 
the law, one in medicine, one in science, one in insurance, two 
in finance and banking, one of them reaching the United States 
Senate. More than half their number were in the national ranks 
within the first year of the war, others following as fast as boys 
could be accepted; five of those incorrigibles were shot to their 
death in battle, three of them as captains, twelve of their number 
won their commissions, two of the twelve rose to be rear 
admirals in the Navy, three of the twelve reached the rank 
of Brigadier General, and one of these three, according to 
local views, about the most unpromising lad of the lot, rose still 
further to the highest rank obtainable in the army, and to the 
Conimandership-in-Chief of the Military Order of the Loyal 
Legion of these United States. 

He was my own chum for four years, my next do:>r neigh- 
bor. We had a hole through the fence, and heaven only knows 
how many in our reputations. We camped, hunted, fished, 
skated, swam, played ball, cricket, wolf, hooky and the mi.schief 
generally, together. His father was one of our judges, engrossed 
in legal, social and political affairs; his mother had died years 
earlier; his stepmother was an invalid; he was left to his own 
devices and such care as the cook and housemaid could afford 
him — a brace of domestics with whom he was forever at war. 
He hated books, school, study or rostni'nt. He hated meanness, 

13 



cowardice or cunning. He was absolutely square, pure-minded 
and pure of speech, yet up to the time we parted in the fall of 
'58, he had no more "bringing up", as it is called, than a young 
savage. Another thing worth noting, we had fine military com- 
panies in those days, to which a few of our number belonged, 
the future eminent doctor and I as drummers, but Mac Arthur 
laughed at everything of the kind. Even in '59 and '60, when I 
was at home on vacation, he loved as ever to go camping, tramp- 
ing, hunting or fishing, but school and soldiering he scoffed at 

Then came the war and sudden transformation. They tell 
at home that from the first call in April he besought his father 
to let him go. They tell how the judge hired detectives to head 
him off; they tell how restless and unhappy he was until the 
spring of '62 as he neared the age of 17, the judge threw up the 
sponge and sent him with a Wisconsin senator to beg of the 
president an appointment-at-large to West Point. Mr. Lincoln 
said he had ten thousand applications for his ten appointments 
that year, and of those ten he had already promised two to Wis- 
consin boys already with the Iron Brigade to the front of Wash- 
ington. Early that summer they raised a Milwaukee regiment, 
the company officers were chosen, the men in camp by July. In 
August, the field and staff were named by the governor. The 
colonel and major came from the Army of the Potomac but to 
the amazement of the men and the wrath of many officers, the 
adjutancy was given to that curly headed boy of Judge Mac- 
Arthur's. 

They tell in the regiment that his first attempt to form the 
battalion was a broad farce, his untried voice and utter inexpe- 
rience told heavily against him. For long days after, the camp 
was maliciously merry with squeaky imitation. The boy set his 
teeth and said nothing. One month, and they were off" for Ken- 
tucky, and almost before they knew the manual, were flung 
neck and crop into the fight at Perryville. The first parade had 
set them to laughing; the first battle set them to thinking. That 
boy adjutant had unsuspected stuff" in him. "Thinking bayon- 
ets" have a way of their own in sizing up their officers, as you 
know. The Twenty-fourth noticed that the adjutant was forever 

reading and studying when he wasn't in the saddle. Two 

14 



months more, and with the rest of Sheridan's Division, they 
were huddling about their colors, flung back from stand after 
stand at Stone's River, their brigadier killed, their colonel miss- 
ing. It was the boy adjutant's voice that held and steadied 
them. It was their adjutant that led them later, with the colors 
high held, panting up the scarp of Mission Ridge and over the 
works at Bragg's headquarters. It was their boy adjutant that 
was jumped over the heads of every captain, and before he had 
reached the age of 19 was major commanding a veteran regiment 
of Wisconsin volunteers. No callow boy now, mind you, but 
a man at heart, if a stripling in physique, conscious of powers 
that had long been latent. Officers there were who swore at his 
luck or influence, but the men swore by him, stood by him and 
followed him as they would no other. They showed it the day 
at Resaca, when hit in the wrist and right breast, he yet con- 
trived to stick to saddle and smiling led them through. They 
showed it that wonderful day at Kenesaw, where, battalion in 
mass, they stood in support, when panic struck the foremost 
line and everything to their right and left went with a rush to 
the rear, but that boy major brought their foremost ranks to the 
charge bayonet, and from that bristling front the mob split 
asunder. They showed it again at Adairsville, Atlanta, Jones- 
boro; they showed it supremely that bloody, wintrj^ afternoon at 
Franklin where after splendidly handling them through the 
thick of the fight, he was borne from their midst, thrice sorely 
wounded, eulogized by corps and division commanders in their 
reports, yet never again to lead them in battle. 

It took months to heal those wounds, and one day in the 
spring of '65 he dropped in at West Point, the uniform of a lieu- 
tenant colonel, covering the scars of Resaca and Franklin. He 
came to take his first look at what had been the goal of his am- 
bition, and to shake hands with his old chum and next door 
neighbor, successful competitor of the first year of the war. The 
latter, by dint of strict attention to duty, had by that timereached 
the exalted rank of Cadet First Sergeant "Yes," said MacAr- 
thur, the "President offered to send me here in '63, when so 
many came from the army, but by that time I had matured ten 
years." '^en years in one. That in mental and soldiery devel- 

15 



opment was just about the pace he set for himself in '62, and 
that pace he maintained to the finish. 

They made him a captain in the regular service at the close 
of the war, and he did the rest. He that had hated study became 
wedded to it. Twenty years later from all the captains of the 
line he was chosen for the staff. Meantime he had mastered 
and been admitted to practise in law. He had dug deep into 
science, mathematics, history and political economy. He was 
the model instructor at the lycavenworth school when appointed 
Adjutant General. He was a logical candidate for brigadier gen- 
eral of volunteers when the war came on with Spain. He was 
one of the three chosen by the first commander of the first army 
ever sent by the United States to uphold its flag across the seas. 
It is no hazard to state that in general knowledge and ability 
there was no man in the army of that day better fitted for the 
supreme command in the Philippines, and after less than two 
years' campaigning he had reached it — reached it and held it 
and exercised that command with consumate ability and admir- 
able result. The policy of the adminstration, however, demanded 
that civil government should succeed the martial, and MacArthur 
subordinately turned over the governorship to the Commission. 
The policy of the civil commission differed largely from that of 
its military predecessor: "I bequeath to you all my troubles" 
said MacArthur, whimsically to his successor, as he left the field 
of his hampered duties to become presently the observer general 
of the United States in Asia and South Africa. Major general 
by that time, he was presently advanced to the grade that con- 
gress had refused to abolish until it had been conferred on him — 
that done, it was to lapse for good and all. 

And then the lieutenant general of the army of the United 
States found himself in a unique position. The army had con- 
fidently looked upon MacArthur as its chief of staff to hold ofl&ce 
until his retirement; the administration choose a junior. Under 
the new dispensation everything in army matters was centered 
in Washington, vested in the .secretary and that staff. There 
was, therefore, no more of a command for a major general than 
for a brigadier — no more independence, opportunity or respon- 
sibility for, and just about as much supervision over the lieuten- 

16 



ant general as the latest brigadier. The man with all that civil 
war experience, the man who had been supreme in command 
across the Pacific — lyord of the Isles, if you will, and head of a 
corps d^armee, was expected to settle down to the supervised 
supervision of a few scattered posts, batteries and battalions, and 
it was presently announced that the lieutenant general would 
relinquish this onerous duty and remove his office to his home 
city, there to complete at leisure the reports of his observation. 
And so as was his earnest wish, our soldier scholar came home 
to us to spend his last years as he said, "among old friends 
and old faces." Fourscore, at least, of his old regiment were 
still resident in Milwaukee, a dozen at least of the chums of his 
boyhood days were close at hand. The rousing reception we 
had planned for him in 1901 was postponed because of the tragic 
death of his firm friend and our beloved President and Compan- 
ion McKinley The public ceremonies projected for his later 
home-coming were prohibited by himself. 

Quietly and unostentatiously, as was his want, he j-etook his 
place among us, accompanied only by his devoted wife and one 
staff officer, and then at. last we learned the source of that serenity 
and composure that armoured him against "the slings and arrows 
of outrageous fortune." To no man did he open his lips in crit- 
icism of the action of his superiors or in confession of disap- 
pointed hope or baulked ambition. Surrounding him on every 
side were the works of the best writers on history, statecraft, 
science, philosophy and law. His soldier work was ended even 
before the statutory date that chronicled his sixty-fourth birth- 
day, and for over two score years he had been learning to find in 
the pages of the great masters countless treasures of wisdom and 
with them that superb strength that springs only from thorough 
knowledge. 

It was in his library at noon on the 2nd of June, 1907, that 
he received the three officers of the army assembled to pay their 
respects to him at the moment when he passed from the active to 
the retired list. Four thousand carefully chosen volumes were 
catalogued in that collection, and though he rejoiced in the visits 
of old chums and friends, though he gloried in the letters 
and occasional coming of his gallant sons — two of the most dis- 

17 



tinguislied of their respective grades, in our navy and army — 
though he cherished to the very last the soldier associations of 
his early life, heading us of the Wisconsin Comraandery until 
promoted to the Commander-in-Chief, and never missing a reunion 
of his old regiment — a fated, fateful devotion — his highest com- 
fort and content lay in the society of his books. The last ten 
years of his life were almost lived in them. 

Time was, when like Moltke, he enjoyed his game of whist, 
but from the night of February 4th. '99, when the seething cal- 
dron of insurrection boiled over and broke upon his line at Santa 
Mesa, MacArthur never would play again. There were beauti- 
ful bright January afternoons in Manila when I sometimes crossed 
the Pasig to look up MacArthur and coax him out for a drive, 
only to find him, his day's work done, stretched in an easy chair 
and finding rest and recreation in Macauley's Essays. And so 
of late years, vainly striving to get him out for air or exercise, I 
have found him invariably in the big library-, pencil and pad close 
at hand, and some huge volume on his lap. Five weeks ago to- 
night, the last evening in his library, he was delightedly looking 
over his latest purchases — Freeman's Norman Conquest of Eng- 
land, in six beautiful volumes. On the broad arm of the chair, 
open at the description of Alaric's descent on Rome, lay Vol. i of 
the Cambridge Mediaeval Histor\- of the Christian Roman Em- 
pire. On a desk to the left, with a penciled sheet of annotations, 
was Woodrow Wilson's Constitutional Government of the United 
States. These were the last works he was studying. Another 
volume lay on the stand by his bedside. The soldier of Mission 
Ridge, of Franklin, and the soldier governor of the Philippines 
turned for his night thoughts to the pages of Plato and Aristotle. 
What mattered it to him who sat as chief-of-stafi" at Washington? 

"I shall never wear the uniform again," he said, five years 
ago, and he never would. Even when decked for the grave there 
was just one token that stamped him for the soldier — the little 
button of the Loyal Legion. Even when he sat at banquet after 
banquet in the station of the commander, or at the right hand of 
the chairman as guest of honor, there was jnst one martial decorat- 
ion from which he never could be divorced, the insignia of this 

IS 



soldier brotherhood. From the date of his retirement, his household 
and his little circle of old friends and that wider circle of intimate 
associates, his books, kept him contentedly and busily occupied. 
There was just one thing on earth that could win him from them— 
the soldier comradeship he felt for his Commandery and for the 
fast dwindling circle of his old command, the Twenty-fourth. 
Feast or funeral of the Loyal Legion he would never neglect; re- 
union of his regiment he would scrupulously attend, even when, 
as it turned out. it meant death to do so. 

For so it proved. The day had been fearfully hot, the night 
came on breathless and stifling. For two years he had not been 
well, for a week he had been so ill as to be denied sufRcient 
nourishment. At the urging of his anxious wife he had written 
reluctantly a note to be read to the survivors of the Twenty- 
fourth, gathered on the 5th of September to celebrate the fiftieth 
anniversary of their departure with their boy adjutant fur the 
front; but at the last moment when the banquet was over, and 
the speech-making begun, he came quietly in, and in one instant 
the assemblage had sprung to its feet, and the hall rang to wel- 
cuming cheers. Again when his name was proposed, and he rose 
to replv, it was over five minutes before they would let him 
begin.' It was the old familiar gesture that stilled their vehe- 
ment plaudits, and let him speak of Atlanta. He was looking 
splendidly as he began. Such enthusiastic greeting had stirred 
his pulses. His voice 6pened firm and strong. Then presently 
came a little falter, a hesitancy unusual to him and that they 
could not account for. The chairman began plying his fan. 
The chaplain noted a pallor spreading from nostril to lip. There 
was obvious groping for words an instant, and then— 
"Comrades, I am too weak to proceed." They lowered him to 
his seat, his head fell forward upon his breast. Amid awed and 
breathless silence, a physician sprang to his side, tested his heart- 
and pulse, and the uplifted hand told the rest. Another moment 
and every man present, following the lead of the Soldier of the 
Cross who knelt by their comrade's side, with stricken hearts 
and trembling lips, was murmuring, "Thy will be done," as the 
soldier spirit took its flight. Last night on earth, facing and 

19 



addressing the very men whom he had led in battle after battle 
fifty years before. From the command of those men he had been 
graduated into the life career of the regular army. In the midst 
of those men with whom he had dared death on field after field, 
he passed onward to the life eternal. 

Within the limits of official tribute it is impossible to detail 
the achievements of our late commander, for years of profound 
study had raised him in scholarship and statesmanship to a plane 
even with his brilliant soldiership. There was no office in the 
gift of the American people which he was not amply fitted to 
adorn. While the army looked upon him as by far its brainiest 
general, the people little knew him, because in modesty he 
shrank from ostentation of every kind. It is among us — Com- 
panions of the L,egion — with whom in his last years he most fre- 
quently appeared, that his powers were most frequently mani- 
fested. The addresses delivered since his home coming stand 
unexcelled in thought, in depth and wisdom. The inspiration 
of his presence and leadership had lent to our ceremonies new 
grace and dignity. The example of his fervent patriotism, his 
unshaken loyalty, his silent and soldierly acceptance of condi- 
tions little looked for in view of his great services, the exalted 
rank he had attained, and with it all the glow of his attachment 
to old comradeships and associations had served to rouse respon- 
sive chords in every heart and to make the boy comrade of our 
school days, the boy colonel of the war days, the accomplished 
soldier scholar of the National Army — last of its illustrious line 
of lieutenant generals — an idol in the eyes of the survivors of his 
old regiment, and the mOvSt honored and revered^ Companion of 
our Knightly Order. 

In silent submission, like unto his own, we bow before the 
mandate of Omnipotence. In soldier mourning, in tender mem- 
ory, and as so well said in the initial circular of our Commander- 
in-Chief, we drape the colors he had ever loved and glorified. 
Wisconsin received again her unrivaled general when from our 
arms the flag-draped form returned to earth and the trumpets of 
the IvOyal Legion — the only martial honors he would accept — 
sang "Ivights Out;" over our great Commander's grave. [Ap- 
plause.] 

20 



The Toast- Master — Our next speaker is a Buckeye of 
whom we are all proud, a gallant soldier, a long-time member 
of Congress, the best fellow on pensions in the world, and a man 
of fine literary culture, who will talk to us a few minutes on 
"The Heroic lyiterature of the Civil war" — General Isaac R. 
Sherwood. 

General Sherwood — Mr. Toast-Master, ladies and com- 
panions of the Loyal Legion: Literature is the ethical expres- 
sion of the dominating public voice. Great events make a great 
literature. It is not the orators or the poets who make the 
epochs of human history; it is the epochs that make the orators 
and the poets. If there had been no Trojan war, there would 
have been no Homer, and if there had been no conflict of the 
kings in the formative period of English history, there would 
have been no Shakespeare. If there had been no great conflict 
from 1 86 1 to 1865, there would have been no Abraham Lincoln, 
and no General Grant, and none of this great array of distin- 
guished soldiers that I see around me here tonight. 

Our war is remarkable in two particulars. There are two 
characteristics of our war that attach to no other wars in human 
history. One is, it was all fought by volunteer soldiers, and the 
other, it is the only war where the soldiers on the march and 
around the bivouac fires sang patriotic songs of moral import. 
In the war of the American Revolution, we had nothing but 
"Yankee Doodle". In that, you know, the words were silly, but 
the music was adapted to the fife and the drum, which made it 
popular. In the War of 1812 there was only one song sung, and 
that was "The Star Spangled Banner", written by Francis Scott 
Key, a lawyer of Frederick, Maryland, and that song was not 
sung by our soldiers. It was written near the close of the war. 
The author was a prisoner on a British man-of-war, which was 
bombarding Fort Henry, near Baltimore, and through the mist>< 
of the night and the smoke of battle he saw that our flag was 
still there, and he wrote that immortal song, "The Star Spang- 
led Banner." But it is the music that makes that one of the 
grandest song of the century. Who wrote the music Thomas 
Durand, a Scotch actor, first sang the Star Spangled Banner in 

21 



a Baltimore tavern and the music is from, "Anacreon in Heav- 
en," written by George Thomas Smith, of I^ondon, in 1793. 

But in our war, on both sides of the Hne, there were over 
two hundred patriotic songs written, and over one hundred and 
fifty of those songs were sung by the soldiers on the march and 
around the bivouac fires, and we have heard two of those songs 
here tonight, sung with so much spirit and enthusiasm by the 
coming statesmen of Ohio. [L-aughter and applause.] George 
F. Root wrote those songs. He wrote four, "Glory, Hallelujah," 
'Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys are Marching," "The Battle 
Cry of Freedom," and "The Vacant Chair;" and of all the songs 
that he wrote. "The Vacant Chair" is the most pathetic, and 
the air reminds me of "My Old Kentucky Home," that mj^ good 
friend from Kentucky enjoyed so much here tonight. [Re- 
ferring to Colonel E. Pope Johnson.] 

"We shall meet but we shall miss him. 
There will be one vacant chair, 
We shall linger to caress him 
When we breathe our evening prayer." 

I just happen to remember that couplet. 

Who first sang these songs for the old soldiers? As near as 
I can ascertain,' they were sung by the famous Hutchinson 
Family of New Hampshire, by whom I heard that song sung in 
1849. The}^ sang the "Songs of Emancipation" — 

"We have come from the mountains of the Old Granite State, 
Where the hills are so lofty, magnificent and great," etc, 

They first sang those songs around the bivouac fires of the Army 
of the Potomac. What did they sing? "John Brown's Body 
lyies A-mouldering in the Grave," that is one of the first songs 
they sang, "But His Soul is Marching On." How many of you 
know who wrote that song? Eet me tell you who wrote it. It 
was written by Fletcher Webster, the son of that great ante- 
bellum statesman Daniel Webster. He was commanding a Mas- 
sachusetts regiment in Boston Harbor in the spring of 1861, and 

22 



he wrote that song that has been sung by ten thousand times ten 
thousand soldiers since the war. 

There is another plaintive song, one of the most pathetic in 
the language, "Tenting Tonight on the Old Camp Ground, 
Waiting for the War to Cease." Who wrote that song? That was 
written one night, one dreary, foggy night, on the Chickahominy . 
The soldier who wrote it had just received a letter from his girl, 
and of all the homesickness in this world is that of the soldier 
who wants to go home and see his girl. He wrote that song, 
and it was set to music, and has been sung all over this country. 

I haven't time— your good chairman made a very excellent 
remark when he said that I would talk a few minutes -I haven't 
time to go through all these songs. But the greatest dramatic 
poem of the country was written by a Buckeye, "Sheridan's 
Ride," by Thomas Buchanan Reed. The patriotic women of Cin- 
cinnati were about to give an entertaiment for the benefit of the 
soldiers in the hospital, and they went to James Murdock, the 
elocutionist, to get him to give a patriotic recitation. He said he 
would be very glad to do so, but he didn't have anything. So 
they appointed a committee and waited upon Reed. That was 
just after Sheridan's victory at Cedar Creek, and Reed thought a 
minute, and he said, "Yes, I will write you something." And 
that poem was an inspiration, he wrote it in three hours, the 
greatest dramatic poem of the war. It is a remarkable poem. 
•^Sheridan's Ride. Did you ever think about it, that none of our 
historians that have written of that battle have given credit to 
the horse that Sheridan rode and without which that victory would 
have been impossible? Sheridan could not have done it on a 
motorcycle or on a bicvcle or in an automobile, he couldn't have 
jumped the fences. What was that horse? A magnificent black 
horse sixteen and a half hands high, half standard bred and half 
thoroughbred. He was brought up in Canada, and was shipped 
over to Port Huron and presented by the citizens to the captain 
ofa Michigan regiment of cavalry; and when General Sheridan 
was ordered to take command of the cavalry of the Army of the 
Potomac, this captain presented him with that horse. When 
Sheridan, that grav October day, heard the thunder of Early's 



23 



guns — and you all know you can tell when an army is retreating, 
because the sound is getting more and more distant — he knew 
that our army was under retreat, and he ordered that magnificent 
black horse saddled, sixteen and a half hands high, and he made 
that ride of twenty miles and struck our army in fifty-eight min- 
utes; and when he reached our staggering battalion, that horses' 
flanks were wet with foam, his nostrils were red with blood and 
his eyes flashed fire, and Sheridan rode along that line and turned 
defeat into victory. And what does the poet say about it? 

"When their statues are reared on high 
Under the dome of the Union sky; 
There, with the glorious general's name, 
Be it said in letters both bold and bright 
Here is the steed that saved the day, 
By carrying Sheridan into the fight, 
From Winchester, twenty miles away'." 

Now then, not all of these poems were of moral import. 
You remember, "Miles O'Reilly," by Charles G. Halpin, of the 
Irish Brigade. He wrote some of the most popular poems of the 
war, but they were of the convivial spirit. "We have Drunk 
From the Same Canteen" was his best poem. You remember 
what he says — one couplet I think I can remember: 

"It was sometimes water and sometimes milk, 
And sometimes applejack finer than silk, 
But whatever the tipple had been 
We shared it together in pain or bliss, 
And I warm to you now as I think of this, 
We have drunk from the same canteen." 

The greatest lyric of the war was written by a woman. I 
never knew the circumstance of the writing of that "Battle 
Hymn of the Republic," written by Julia Ward Howe, until 
three years ago, and that was an inspiration. At her eighty- 
seventh birthday celebration she gave the circumstances under 
which she wrote that immortal poem. She had visited during 
the day the camps of the Army of the Potomac, and she was so 

24 



impressed with that army and the great cause for which it was 
struggling, that she went to her hotel, and she got up at three 
o'clock in the morning, and before daylight she wrote that im- 
mortal poem. It is the A.lpha and Omega of all we struggled 
for in the war: 

"In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea; 
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free." 

lyct me call your attention to the fact tonight that for one 
hundred and fifty years and for half a century, no poet has arisen 
to write a poem equal to any of those war poems in patriotic 
spirit and in.spiration. And let us hope that at some near-by 
time some poet will arise and sing of Gettysburg and Atlanta, of 
Vicksburg and Chattanooga, of Nashville and Appomattox, in 
some grand and glorious epic. I thank you. [Applause.] 

The Toast-MasTEr — That able lawyer, gallant soldier and 
accomplished statesman who will speak to us next although shot 
nigh unto death, is here tonight to speak on "Peace", and I take 
great pleasure in presenting General John C. Black. [Applause.] 

Gen. John C. Black — Mr. Toastmaster, ladies and gentle- 
men, my thoughts have been wandering on distant and very 
affecting pathways this evening, as I have listened to the story 
of Mac Arthur, to the story of the songs of the war, to the story of 
the purposes of the Military Order of the L,oyal lyCgion; and I 
come back but slowly to the theme that has been assigned me. 

Four years of war had gone into history. There were hun- 
dreds of thousands of graves of young Americans. There were 
hopitals above which floated the green flag of humanity, filled 
with the maimed, with the sick and. with the hopeless. All over 
the land were hung the sable hatchments of an incurable grief — 
griefs that were to last as long as the eyes of a mother wept, as 
long as the heart of a wife was torn. All around the coast of the 
ocean was the sparkling sepulcher of the dead who in shotted 
shroud were shot from the silent decks to the depths below. 
This had lasted until human power of endurance seemed all but 

25 



exhausted. Two thousand and more of fields of strife had left 
their records of crimson, and at last, on the 9th of April, 1865, 
there came a day when a million of men in arms were seeking 
each others lives, a million of men who had but one thought, 
and that was a victorious revenge for all the years of pain and 
agony. In ten minutes on that day, as the sun descended, six 
hundred of the brave and true were strewn upon a single field of 
strife — six hundred more mourning households at home. And 
this was war. 

With the passing of the shadows of that night and the rising 
into the heavens the next day, on the loth of April, of the sun, 
how wonderful a change had taken place in all the scenes of 
contest. Grant and L,ee had made the terms of a peace that 
affected their armies, the terms of that peace had been agreed 
upon, and war's awful limit had been reached. Wherever Death 
stood expectant, in valley or on hill, that day he was baulked of 
his pre5\ Where the evening before conflicting standards, borne 
by conflicting men, had rushed toward each other, on that morn- 
ing there was left in all the American heavens but a single flag. 
Slaughter had ceased, pain had surged to its farthest shores, the 
thoughts of men that the day before had been filled with the 
eager lust of strife, turned in that glad spanning of the sun to 
thoughts of the far away home, of the dear land and the dear 
people that waited for the soldier lad. The bayonets sparked 
and glimmered no more; the guns grew silent forever; and from 
those fields where brothers had been hunting each other, there 
turned away to the new life and the new enterprises that million 
of men, some to go back and seek for the foundations of their 
ruined homes, some to go out in the broader enterprises of the 
newer times, all, all, thank God, united in the new purpose that 
here on this continent there should be forever one people, one 
constitution, one law, one destiny and one land. [Applause.] 
And back they came, to all the fields of industry from which 
they had been whirled. Back they came to mother, to father, to 
sister and to wife, back they came to thank God that this was 
peace. 



26 



And what a peace it has been ! It has lasted now for half a 
century. It has been broken but by a single ripple of the 
slightest war, compared with war like the pastime of a summer's 
day; and although great results were wrought by that little 
struggle, although a flag which had once flamed with the unholy 
lust of gold and dripped with the blood of subjective peoples, 
dropped forever from the skies of the American continent; 
although our dominion was spread out over the seas and to the 
far islands, still, with the exception of the slight struggle of that 
time, the American people now for half a century have enjoyed 
peace. What use they have made of it you know. 

This assembly is a flower and blossom of that peace. While 
we older men that wear the yellow in our hairs mingle among 
you still, all about us come the youngsters, with their dreams, 
their hopes, their aspirations. We have made good in peace. 
We have not only builded up the distant states, we have not 
only set the barriers of the union far out, we have not 
only carried the blessings of its institutions into distant lands, 
but more and dear than that, we have filled the American con- 
tinent with the American homes — and this is peace. 

And yet it does not do, because men love this stage and dread 
the other — and no men love this stage or dread the other more 
than the former soldiers of the Union who drank the red chalice 
to its dregs — although, I say, we do love the one stage and shrink 
with horror from the remembrances of the other, still it is true 
that into this stage of peace have come the doubts of the world. 
We have before us the example of that mighty empire which 
through twenty-six hundred years of conquest and of life and 
splendour, kept the doors oi its Temple of Peace open for but 
one hundred years. We have our own history which shows that 
during one hundr-ed and thirty years of time we have waged 
wars over and over and over again. And we have the 
strange fact that in a land of the people and of the people's gov- 
ernment and of the people's desire to live, there abides the 
most warlike nation, the most martial people in all the annals of 
time. And while we are growing, and while we love } eace, yet 
our army is busy today in determining what is the latest and the 
best of armament by which it may meet and overcome its foes. 

27 



Our navy is the most dreaded combination, ship for ship, that 
ever sailed under a common flag. And the men who strive that 
they may yet be dominators of the air and set the laws of 
nature, long established, into abeyance, are stimulated more by 
the hope that in building aerial ships they may be able to destroy 
the other men than by the hope that they will confer benefit 
upon commerce or navigation, or accomplish something for the 
public good. 

So we are, as we have been from the beginning of time, 
standing in doubt whether peace or war awaits the republic. 
You and I will see it no more; for us it is something hidden in 
the future. But our children, who can tell what their fate will 
be? Since you and I piled arms and marched away, some of the 
South and some of the North, when the glad bells rang out, 
when the great trumpet voices of the people united to sing the 
paean of peace, to echo back to Bethlehem's plain and sky the 
song that was sung bv the angels 1900 years ago; since that 
time you and I, who believed that perhaps in the fulness of 
Providence, men have learned to settle their disputes by reason, 
have seen the earth rocked by the feet of armies. We have seen 
wars that were majestic in their proportion fought, and today, 
along the line of the Mediterranean, where empire has abode for 
the centuries, the peoples are in arms against each other. In 
ancient China, where our young men went bearing the cross and 
the starry flag and asking that the dragon might be removed 
from the sky, the peoples are armed and struggling against each 
other. We have seen Japan and Russia at each other's throats; 
we have seen France and Germany in mortal struggle. We have 
seen all that lies south of us on this continent the scene of rev^o- 
lution, of 'distress and disappointment to the lovers of their kind. 

What is to come? I have theorized about it some, but that 
which has given me possibly more hope than any other single 
httle incident is this: On the walls of West Point, in that great 
academy where the men who have led our American armies 
were reared and nurtured in the art of war, is written this in- 
scription: "Righteousness becometh a people, but sin is a re- 
proach to anv nation." If these young and training warriors of 
ours conceive its power and its truth, there is hope that yet the 



dominion and the exercise of armies may be limited in human 
affairs. For these two, righteousness and sin, are set over against 
each other in eternal combat, and wars will cease and peace will 
come only when the great nation is governed by the principles 
written on that tablet in West Point. 

What interest is it to us who linger here late on the stage 
of activities, what these our boys may be called upon to do? 
What difference shall it make to us whether swords shall yet be 
drau n above our graves, or whether the glad reign of the Prince 
of Peace shall be established after our time? All the difference 
that it can make to men who love the truth and love their kind. 

And so, my companions, it is for us who have seen and felt 
what I have faintly attempted to describe to you, to try to estab- 
lish in this nation the rule of righteousness. Commercialism is 
not the rule of righteousness. It is not a tolerable propo- 
sition that the splendid youngsters of today should stand 
ready to force our commerce upon an unwilling people. It 
is better for us that we return to the standard of the time when 
the nation summoned you to its battlefields, and when you went 
forth not caring for the commercial stipremacies or the commer- 
cial interests of this great nation, but caring for its virtue, its 
law, and the future of the world. Whenever this great nation 
shall take into its daily life and into its constant counsel the 
thought that righteousness becometh it, that selfishnes, that a 
disregard for the rights of the multitude is injurious, then and not 
until then will peace be the possible, the splendid, the over- 
whelming blessing of the mighty power! [Applause] 

The Toast- Master— In full recognition of the fact that 
this cruel war is over, and that those who fought on either side 
now yield willing allegiance to one government and devotion to 
one flag, it has seemed eminently proper and fit to the committee 
having this banquet in charge, that some representative of the 
other side should be invited to participate with us in these fes- 
tivities. We have been extremely fortunate in securing the 
services of a distinguished officer of the Confederate army, who, 
when I tell you marched with that bold and fearless rider, Joe 

Wheeler, must have been "going some." I take great pleasure 

29 



in saying to this gentlemen that he is here on our invitation and 
is our honored guest in that spirit of fellowship and brotherhood 
which I believe does prevail or should prevail now throughout 
the entire United States. I now have the pleasure of calling 
upon Colonel E. Polk Johnson of Kentucky who will say, "A 
Few words From the Other Side." [Applause.] 

CoivONEL Johnson — lyadies and gentlemen, I am the most 
modest old rebel, you ever saw in your life. You embarrassed 
me to begin with. Mr. Toast-master, ladies, and comrades of the 
Union army. [Applause.] I say you will permit me to call 
you my comrades, though in those dreadful days which are now 
past forever, I followed the colors of one government and you 
those of another, I want to say to you, for myself, for my fellow 
Confederates of Kentucky, for my fellow Confederates of the 
South that we follow the flag of the Union forever. [Applause.] 

"Forever float that standard sheet. 
Where breathes the foe but falls before us, 
With Freedom's soil beneath our feet 
And Freedom's banner o'er us." 

That was the flag of my old rebel grandfather who rode with 
Washington. It was the flag of my Union father in 1861 to 1865, 
who told me to keep out of the trouble, that if I didn't, Mr. 
Ivincoln and his people would do a plenty to me. When I came 
home — and I want to tell you I came home late, I surrendered 
one month after Appomattox day exactly. [I^aughter.] You 
have heard talk of the last ditch, I am one of the few men that 
saw it. I went there and look down into it, and there were a 
good-natured lot of Yankee soldiers that came along and said, 
"Old boy, you have done your duty. Don't get down in there. 
Come along and surrender." And I took their advice. [Laugh- 
ter.] ' That has been my flag ever since I took the oath of alleg- 
iance to the United States Government. It is going to be my 
flag to the last days of my life. 

30 



When the war with Spain was coming on, I asked the 
governor of my state to permit me to go. I said, "It is good for 
the boys who are going that some of us old fellows who have 
been there and know the ropes should be along with them." He 
said, "There are two reasons why you can't go. One of them is 
the high regard I have for Mrs. Johnson, and the other is that 
you are too old." Now, I don't propose to say in this presence, 
especially in view of the large number of ladies here, how old I 
was, but I have never been retired from the United States army 
on account of age. [I^aughter.] Governor Bradley said, "The 
best I can do for you, my boy, is to keep you at home, but your 
eldest son shall go, your first-born, the apple of your eye." And 
I gave him to my country. He had the distinguished honor to 
serve with General Miles in Porto Rico, and I say to you to- 
night, my friends and comrades, he sleeps in a soldier's grave, 
wearing the uniform of an officer of the United States army, if 
his old father was a rebel. 

When Judge Hutchins wrote to me and extended the highly 
prized invitation to come here and take part in this meeting to- 
night, I was afraid to come, honestly I was afraid, and I said to 
Mrs. Johnson, "I am afraid to go up there— one old rebel with a 
regiment of Yankees about him. What am I going to do if they 
all start after me at once?" She said, "I don't think you need to 
be disturbed particularly about that. You seemed to have kept 
clear of them during the war with reasonable success." And 
here I am. Now, I submit to the ladies present, to say nothing 
of the old soldiers, if that wasn't a nice way for a good wife who 
has a most excellent husband, to talk to that old husband, when 
those very same Yankees that she was talking about had shot 
down twice on the field of battle and captured him once, and 
were so fond of his company after they got him that they kept 
him for fourteen months, and came very near not letting him get 
back in time to see the collapse of all things under the sun? 

I did get back. I am not going to apologize to anybody for 
having been a Confederate soldier, because you dear old fellows 
of the Union army wouldn't love me if I did. I did my duty as 
I saw it from my standpoint, and you did yours. If I had been 
born in Ohio or New York or Michigan, or wherever you gentle- 

31 



men were born, I would have been with you shoulder to shoul- 
der; and I think it is extremely probable that if you had been born 
in Kentucky, a good many of you would have been along with 
me. We were the only state in the Union — and if I brag about 
Kentucky a little, you will excuse me, because it is the greatest 
state I ever was born in in my life — we are the only state in the 
Union that furnished a full quota to both armies, the only state 
that was able to furnish two presidents to the governments at 
the same time — and we did that. Our state was the birthplace 
of Abraham I^incoln, and we are taking care of that birthplace 
todaj', rebels and union men alike, and honoring the memory of 
that great man. It was the birthplace of Jefferson Davis, and 
we are taking care of his birthplace. I remember in the expo- 
sition at Chicago in 1893, '^i the Forestry Division there was a 
tremendous section of a tree, marked "Cut From the Farm on 
Which Jefferson Davis Was Born." I mentioned it to my wife, 
and there was a lady standing near us — I am fearful that she 
had some small degree of prejudice — who turned to me and said, 
with a snap in her eyes, "I wouldn't be particularly proud of it, if I 
were you." I said, "my dear madam" I am particularly proud of it 
and I am particularly of another fact, that up at the Kentucky 
Building there is a piano, every inch of wood in which grew on 
the farm where Abraham Lincoln was born, and I invite you to 
come up to our house and see it. We are the only state in the 
Union that was able to furnish two presidents at once " 

We not only went into both armies and tried to do our duty, 
but we broke up the families. One of the most distinguished 
families of the state of Kentucky was the Breckenridge family. 
John C Breckenridge had been an officer in the United States 
army. He, as you know, became a major general in the Confed- 
erate army and Secretary of War of the Confederacy. Robert J. 
Breckenridge was the friend and adviser of Mr. lyincoln, one of 
the most distinguished Protestant ministers that this country 
has ever known. He had four gallant boys. Two of them went 
into the army of the Union. One of them died soon afterwards, 
the other one who lived to be an Inspector General of the army 
of the United States. Some of you know very well General Joe 

Breckenridge, who I hope is living today The two othe r boys 

32 



of the four went with the South. One of them, a major of 
cavalry, served in the Confederate congress, the other one, a 
colonel of cavalry, served under General Morgan and scared the 
people of Ohio almost to death at a certain period not necessary 
to be particularly referred to, and afterwards became the most 
distinguished orator in the Congress of the United States, Wil- 
liam C. P. Breckenridge. 

I mention these things not to glorify anybody, or even if I 
do glorify the Confederacy, I want to say to my friend who 
made the response to the address of welcome tonight, that I am 
glorifying the Union troops too, because if I set high the stan- 
dard of the Confederacy, how much higher is the standard of 
those who beat us! [Applause.] Did you ever look at it that 
way? When my old father told me, "I said Mr. Lincoln would 
whip you," I told him, "He didn't whip us, he beat us." 

I haven't got but a very few words more to say, and one of 
them is this, that when you shed your blood and I shed my 
blood, we washed out that old thing we called Mason and Dixon's 
lyine, and nobudy knows where it is today, and, thank God, no- 
body wants to know! [x\pplause ] Something else you did and we 
did — if we hadn't started that war it might have been going on 
yet — we wiped out the curse of the white people of the Union, 
North and South, and abolished slavery forever, thank God that 
we did. Thank God that that banner, wherever it floats, can- 
not shield a man who is^not a freeman. And I say this from the 
bottom of my heart, and not as a Confederate soldier, for that is 
over with, not as a Union soldier, for that is over with. Your 
hearts are freighted with holy memories, and they ought to be. 
Give me my memories too. Give us of the South our memories 
too. But let me say to you heroes of that war, splendid soldiers 
as you were, that we of the South are as honest today as you, 
and that this government, that flag, is not your flag, it is not my 
flag, it is oar flag, [applause] and it always will be our flag. 
Why, that tremendous conflict was a necessity, it was an irre- 
pressible conflict, as they said at the beginning of the war. We 
had the curse upon us, no matter how it came, we had it and we 
had to get rid of it, and we paid for it with the precious blood of 

33 



the soldiers of the North and of the South ahke; and the glory 
of the American soldiery does not belong alone to one side or 
the other, it belongs to all of us, because there were never, since 
created time, two such armies as those which confronted each 
other from 1861 to 1865. [Applause.] And more than that, 
there will never be two such armies meeting again, because the 
cause which brought this war on cannot come back again, but 
we will have that peace which General Black so eloquently spoke 
of, that peace in our homes, that peace in our country, 
and we will learn to love each other. Why, the South of seces- 
sion and of slavery is dead, dead beyond any resurrection, and 
there is none who would resurrect it. The South of today is 
a South of freedom, a South of peace, a South which is 
going on and building up its waste places, and is richer today 
in every way, rich in holy memories of its heroes, rich finan- 
cially, richer in every way than when the black curse rested 
upon shoulders, which, thank God has been removed forever. 
[Applause.] 

We want you to come and see us and know us. During the 
war we used to ask you to let us alone, "You go away and quit 
bothering us, and we are not going to bother you," but you 
wouldn't do it. Now we ask, not you soldiers — you know what 
is right and you do it — we ask the politicians to let us alone, 
and we will work out our destiny down South, and we ask you 
to come down and help us do it. Some of you rascals have 
already been down there and stolen our girls away and married 
them, showing the most admirable judgment of your entire 
careers. There are some of them left. Come back, and you will 
have a fair chance wuth our Southern boys with them. 

There has been very little said tonight about those of our 
two armies who are not with us, those who enriched the soil of 
a thousand battlefields with their blood, the men in blue and the 
men in gray. They cannot be with us, but we can remember 
them, we can cherish the honor and the glory which they shed 
upon the colors under which they served. We cannot do too 
much for thetn nor for the lame and halt of our survivors. But 
of those who are gone, your dead and my dead, let them rest in 
peace. I want just to quote a few lines that are on the gate of 

34 



every Federal cemetary in this country, and to tell you some- 
thing, not boastfully, but to tell you that they were written by a 
lieutenant colonel in the Confederate army, and a Kentuckian 
at that, as most good things were: 

"On Fame's eternal camping ground 
Their silent tents are spread. 
And Glory guards with solemn round 
The bivouac of the dead." 

[Applause,] 

The To AST-Master— Now, my friends, it is getting late, 
but we are having an awfully good time. Be a Httle patient; we 
have a lot of good yet to come. 

A Companion— Can a member of the second class have a 
little to say here? 

The Toast-Master— Certainly, by all means. 

The Companion— I propose a health to the gentleman from 
Kentucky, and a message of respect to Mrs. Johnson. 

Colonel Johnson— Mrs. Johnson is a lady of very excel- 
lent judgment, as I stated a little while ago. 

The Toast-Master — Now, we have an Ohioan in whom we 
all feel pride. He has been a splendid soldier, a member of 
Congress for many years, and a loyal companion of the Loyal 
Legion. We will now have a few words from Colonel W. R. 
Warnock, and his theme is "The Decisive Battle of the Civil 
War." [Applause.] 

Colonel Warnock— Mr. Toast-master, ladies and com- 
panions, I notice that it is now eight minutes after twelve o'clock. 

The Toast-Master — No, you are mistaken about that, it 

is only five minuets after. 

35 



Colonel Warnock— I wouldn't undertake to deliver the 
message I had prepared on this subject at this late hour; I believe 
I will save my speech for another time. Two Irishmen were 
visiting the World's Fair. They saw a clock, a wonderful 
clock, and underneath the clock was written these words, "This 
clock will run 365 days without winding." "L,ook here," said 
Pat, "here is a clock that will run 365 days without winding. I 
wonder how long it would run if they did wind it." I wonder 
how long these gentlemen would have talked if they had been 
wound up. [lyaughter.] , Five of them have talked over two 
hours, and the poor fellow that comes at the last end has groaned 
and wondered and wondered if they had been wound up three 
X)r four times. 

I delight in these occasions. The fact is, as I grow older I 
find myself drawn closer and closer to the members, my compan- 
ions of the IvOyal lyCgion, and to the Grand Army encampments, 
to the gatherings of the boys of the Grand Army of the Repub- 
lic. And when I went to get ready to come up here, our cook 
who has been with us a good many years, said to my wife, "Now, 
where is the gentleman going?" "Well, to meet some of his old 
army friends at Cleveland." "Well, I think the old boys are 
making up for the hard times they had. God bless'em, let'em 
meet as often as they can." And so, in pursuance of that feeling 
I joined a special train to I^os Angeles last month to the meeting 
of the Grand Army of the Republic We had a special train. The 
only drawback was that we were to take our meals at the Harvey 
eating houses, and we were always late for breakfast by three 
hours. And so some of the passengers asked the conductor, 
"Why is it that we are so late?" "Oh," said the conductor, "we 
are rushed, we have trains before us and trains behind us, and 
the reason that w^e are late this morning is that the train in front 
of us is behind, and that our train is behind besides." [lyaugh- 
ter.] Well, that lucid explanation satisfied us to wait a couple 
of hours longer for our breakfast. But we were greatly repaid 
when we got to California. I learned a good many things out 
there. Why, do you know, they told me when there that a great 
many questions had been solved looking towards the devolop- 
ment of their country, and that they were greatly indebted to 

36 



Mr. Burbank, the man that invented potatoes you know; that 
Mr. Burbank had been experimenting and that he had produced 
an entirely new vegetable. We were all curious to hear about 
that, and they explained to us the process, and part of it was this — 
that he had taken an onion and a potato, and had squeezed the 
juice out of the onion into the potato, and made it water so that 
it had irrigated the ground all around the potatoes, and the ques- 
tion of irrigation has now been settled. 

But my theme tonight was, "The Decisive Battle of the 
Cival War," and I had a pretty good subject prepared. L,et me 
give you just a little bit of it: 

Some years ago I read a book entittled, "The Fifteen De- 
cisive Battles of the World". I then learned that some of the 
battles where there were not many men engaged as compared with 
some other great struggles in history, were called decisive battles 
of the world because of the victorious army; and then I learned 
that there was a great deal of difference between what may be 
called the bloodiest battle in history and the most decisive battle 
in history, for some of the bloodiest battles in history were not 
productive of any results, but they were known in history large- 
ly because they were the bloodiest battles recorded; in other 
words, the bloodiest battles have been perhaps the most historic, 
but in many cases they were not the most decisive. L,et me 
illustrate by naming a few of the battles referred to in this book. 
The first which I call to your attention was when twenty-four 
hundred years ago Miltiades descended from the hills upon the 
Plains of Marathon with his ten thousand .splendid Greek sold- 
iers and attacked with such impetuo.sity Darius with his one 
hundred thousand Persians that they drove the Persian army in 
dreadful confusion from that bloody field. That victory decreed 
the fate of empires and affected the whole known woild for a 
thousand years. The tumuli which covered the graves of the 
heroic dead are almost obliterated, and the ten columns which 
were erected in memory of the ten tribes have wholly disap- 
peared, but the battle of Marathon still remains in history as one 
of the fifteen decisive battle of the world. It broke the power of 
King Darius and made Athens the chief city of Greece and gave 
to mankind the intellectual treasures of Athens and promoted 
the growth of civilization. 

37 



Again, in 732 was fought the battle of Tours when the Mo- 
hammedans from the east were arrayed against the Christian 
powers of the west under Charles Martel. Charles Martel won 
and thus saved the Christian nations of the west from Moham- 
medanism, thus affecting the happiness and progress of the 
world for many centuries. The numbers engaged were not so 
large as in many of the other historic battles, but the results 
achieved were marvelous. 

In 1066 was fought the battle of Hastings, - when William 
the Conqueror prevailed over King Harold, the last of the Saxon 
kings, thus giving to England a martial nobility of the bravest 
and most progressive race that has ever existed. Here, too, the 
numbers engaged were comparatively small and the implements 
of warfare, as in each of the other battles named, consisted of 
battle axes, bows and arrows and other weapons of warfare of the 
most primitive character. 

In 1777 was fough the battle of Saratoga, which resulted in 
the surrender of the army of Burgoyne. It brought about the 
alliance with France, which assured the independence of the 
thirteen colonies and resulted at last in the establishment of this 
great republic. 

In 1814 was fought the great battle of Waterloo between the 
Duke of Wellington and the Allies and Napoleon; here, too, the 
numbers engaged were not as great as in some of the battles of 
our Civil War, but it is one of the fifteen decisive battles of the 
world because the overthrow of Napoleon changed the geography 
of Europe and gave to England, the acknowledged mistress of 
the seas, the foremost place in our modern civilization 

I have cited enough of the decisive b?>ttles to show that they 
were decisive not because of the numbers engaged or the bloody 
casualties attending them, but because of the results obtained 
and because of their effect upon the nations of the world. 

38 



In our great Civil War, to determine the decisive, battle, 
what was the result desired? The restoration of the Union. The 
war was brought about by a conflict of ideas. The Union could 
not be restored without removing the cause — Shiloh, Gettysburg, 
Vicksburg and other bloody conflicts were terrible blows to the 
South, but they did not restore the Union. They were necessary 
to be fought, but they alone could not bring about the desired 
result. 

It is true that the greatly superior force can hold the inferior 
in subjection. Terms can be dictated and the inferior force can 
be brought to submission. But the object of the war was to 
restore the Union. The conflict of arms had been brought about 
by the conflict of ideas, and it was this conflict of ideas that was 
the cause of the armed attempt to disrupt the Union. Before 
the Union could be restored, the cause which led to the armed 
conflict must be removed. Here then was the great battle to be 
fought. The cause of the great conflict of ideas was to be 
removed. What was the situation at that time? It was the 
year 1862 

The beginning of the second year of our Civil War was very 
discouraging because of the withdrawal of the army under 
McClellan from the swamps of the Chickahominy and establish- 
ing a new base on the James River, and this was followed in the 
month of August, 1862, by the defeat of Pope at the second 
battle of Manassas. For many months prior to this disaster Mr. 
Lincoln had been importuned by Horace Greeley and many others 
of the most distinguished men of the country, to issue an emanci- 
pation proclamation. He was also importuned by the great 
religious bodies of the country to issue such a proclamation. 
He was criticised very severely because he had not taken such a 
step, and the utterances in one of his speeches before he was 
inaugurated president that if he could save the Union with 
slavery, he would do it, or if he could save the Union without 
slavery, he would do that. This had occasioned a great deal of 
criticism on the part of the extremists, but owing to the fact that 
his cabinet were divided on the subject and because of the dis- 

39 



asters which occurred to the Union armies, to which I have just 
referred, he withheld action. Harassed as he had been by his 
pohtical friends and by his critics, Mr. Lincoln for many months 
had passed through a terrific struggle. At last the battle of 
Antietam was fought and Lee's army retreated back into Vir- 
ginia early in September, 1862. On the 22nd day of that year, 
Mr. Lincoln, entering upon the business of a cabinet meeting of 
that day, announced to his cabinet that in his judgment the time 
had come for him to issue the proclamation freeing the slaves in 
those states that were in rebellion, and proceeded to read a draft 
of the proclamation, stating that he believed the sentiment of the 
country demanded it and that the people would sustain it, and 
that he had promised his God to issue it. This remark seems not 
to have been heard by any of the cabinet except Mr. Chase, and, 
turning to the president, Mr. Chase said, "Mr. Lincoln, will you 
repeat the last remark?" In response, Mr. Lincoln said, "I made 
a vow to God that if he would give us the victory at Antietam 
and Lee's army should be driven from Maryland, I would at 
issue a proclamation freeing the slaves." This was done at once, 
to take effect January ist, 1863. On the first of January, 1863, 
Mr. Lincoln then formally issued the proclamation, closing with 
these words: "Upon this proclamation sincerely believed to be 
right, within the constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke 
the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of 
Almighty God." The decisive battle has been fought out in the 
White House by Abraham Lincoln. This proclamation at once 
aroused great enthusiasm throughout the entire North, and en- 
listments which had lanquished at once followed by the enroll- 
ment of thousands of men who had been holding back because of 
the failure to proclaim the freedom of the slaves. This procla- 
mation resulted in the adoption of the 13th and i5tli amend- 
ments to the constitution. The colored man being freed, at 
once became a soldier, and tens of thousands of them were re- 
cruited within the next few months within the borders of the 
states then in rebellion. These colored troops proved to be a very 
great addition to the army. The moral support which the presi- 
dent received from the whole North proved to be even a more 
valuable support, and from that time forward there never was 

40 



any question as to the ultimate triump of the struggle for the 
preservation of the Union. It may be that the destruction or 
human servitude was not the object of the war, but it became an 
absolute necessity of the war. The system could not live in this 
country and it perished in the shock of battle. Who can tell but 
that the flag went down at Sumter for the reason that when it 
should be lifted up again it would lift up all men with it? The 
breaking of the fetters casts a glow of humanity over the entire 
struggle and arouses a sympathy in every heart that beats to be 
free. That great struggle, together with the soldiers and states- 
men of that period, established the fact for all time to come that 
the declaration that all men are free and equal arises from the 
very depths of our souls, and that in its defense we are willing 
to, and have expended countless treasures and the best blood of 
the land. It has demonstrated the fact that this beautiful 
country of ours, blooming between the seas, has been consecrated 
for all time by the blood of our bravest and our best to the cause 
of universal liberty and the equality of mankind 

"L/ift up your heads, despondent freemen. 
Fling to the winds your needless fears, 
He who unfurls that beauteous banner 
Says it shall live a thousand years. 
Tell the great world the blessed tidings, 
Yes, and be sure the bondman hears. 
Tell the oppressed of every nation 
Jubilee lasts a thousand years, 
Haste thee along thou glorius noontide 
Oh, for the eyes of ancient seers! 
Oh, for the faith of him who reckons 
Each of his day's a thousand years!"' 

But these are the days of rusted swords and shields, of loosened 
helmets and broken spears, these are the days of fraternity, and 
hands are clasped across all sorts of bloody chasms. We are a 
happy, prosperous and reunited country. This is an era of good 
will and of peace. The United States has sent forth a call to the 
world for the settlement of wrongs, not by blows or bloodshed, 

Al 



but by arbitration; and the nations of the earth are heeding the 
call. Already the United States and England are negotiating a 
treaty for the submission of all their dififerences, whether of 
honor or otherwise, to a court of arbitration. France, through 
her ambassador, has signified a willingness to treat on the sub- 
ject; so has the German Ambassador, and so has the Japanese 
Ambassador. It is coming. The days of universal peace are 
coming. One great civil war gave a new birth to Freedom. It 
established the fact that all men are equal before the law. And 
it established the fact that the claims of humanity are higher 
than the claims of rulers, or parties, or policies, or big interests. 
And out of this has grown a civihzation that has exalted human 
life and human character and human happiness and human 
rights. [Applause.] 

The Toast- Master — If I were to spend the balance of the 
evening until daylight in attempting to enumerate the ability, 
the career, the glory, the usefulness and the great good accom- 
plished for our common country by the next speaker of the even- 
ing, I should spend it in vain. I therefore will not attempt it, 
but I introduce to you one of the most famous American gen- 
erals who has commanded the armies of the United States and 
who is still in the prime of his manhood and abotit as handsome 
as he was when I saw him married in Cleveland to a Cleveland 
girl a number of years ago. [Applause.] And I think that was 
the smartest thing h-^ ever did after all, and I guess he thinks so. 
Now, what man living in the United States is better qualified to 
talk upon the theme which he will speak upon tonight — "Our 
Country?" General Nelson A. Miles. [Applause] 

General Miles — Mr. Toast-master, companions and friends 
I thank you for this cordial greeting. Surely there is no comp- 
any that I enjoy so much as the company of brave men, the comp- 
any of heroes, of patriots of men who have served their country 
and accomplished something for the welfare of their race, their 
people and the great Republic. I am gratified to be at this re- 
union, here in this beautiful Forest City, this center of wealth 
and prosperity. A visit to Cleveland always brings to my mind 
the romance and the best memories of my life: 

42 



I have beeu identified with the MiHtary L,oyal I^egion of 
America from its earliest organization, first a member of the 
Commandery of Massachusetts, then a charter member of the 
Commandery of Oregon, then a charter member of the Com- 
mandery of Kansas, for a number of years the commander of the 
CaHfornia Commandery, then a vice-commander of the whole 
organization, and at present a member of the Commandery of 
the District of Columbia, and certainly it is an honor to be a 
member of such an organization. Your lives were devoted to the 
welfare of your country when your country needed your services. 
You gathered up all the bright prospects of life and were willing 
to place them, with your life if need be, upon the altar of your 
country. It has been your glory, to accomplish the great work 
of preserving this Republic. No such achievement has been 
accorded to man so far, in my opinion, as was accorded to you. 
It has done more toward the uplifting of the race, toward 
the improvement of government, and more for the institutions of 
liberty, independence and happiness than any one achievement 
in all history. The gloom that overshadowed our country in 
1 86 1 was indeed a dark and threatening one, and we were in 
doubt as to what would be the result. It looked to many as if 
the Republic must dissolve, that the states must become separated 
and divided up into little principalities forever contending against 
each other. We little realized that there in the hearts of the 
young men, aye, the boys of that day, such a strong, determined 
will and patriotism and will power that enabled them to marshal 
themselves together in the great armies of the Union. More 
than two millions of men enlisted in the Union cause. More 
than a million enlisted before they were eighteen years of age, 
and the bulk of them were less than twenty-one years of age 
when they enli.sted. Such an army was never recruited before, 
it was an army never to be recruited again. Many of them 
left home for the first time, and the trials and hardships and suf- 
ferings of desperate campaigns and terrible battles welded those 
young men and boys into a companionship, a friendship that has 
lasted for half a century and is the strongest bond that can unite 
men in a noble cause. Not only were you heroic and valiant in 
the military service, but when the war cloud di.'sappeared, when 

43 



the black-mouthed cannon, were silent, when the long lines of 
rifles were stacked and the war flags furled, there was a gen- 
erosity and a magnanimity displayed by the Union forces never 
equaled in the history of any army. You realized that you had 
been engaged in a war more desperate than usual; that it was a 
war of Americans against Americans. The very flower of 
American manhood was engaged in that terrible struggle on 
both sides, from the North and from the South, and when it was 
over, when the problem had been submitted to the terrible ar- 
bitrament of war and decided in your favor, at once you buried 
in the last ditch all the prejudice, all the animosity, all the hos- 
tility that was burning in your hearts, and you took your opponent, 
your valiant opponent, by the hand; and the sentiment that per- 
vaded the great armies and the people of that time all over our 
country, was beautifully expressed in those lines by one of tlie 
most distinguished jurists of our country when he said: 

"Thank God for the dawning of peace 
The respite from conflict and the sweet release 
From the carnage of war and the horrors of strife, 
The shedding of blood and the wasting of life. 

"Far be the day when we rally again 
For the harvest of depth and the reaping of men, 
With no taunt for the vanquished, no tears for the slain, 
'Tis enough, we were brothers and are brothers again. 

"Now in our land one flag shall float, 
One song ascend from every throat; 
That flag the banner of the free, 
Than song the song of liberty." 

That was the sentiment given to us by the immortal Lincoln, 
and it was the sentiment that prompted every heart as soon as 
the war was over. We returned to our homes, some desolate by 
the visitation of war, but all welcome back to our homes again. 
Those who wore the blue and those who wore the grey turned 
their faces to the great West, and they reclaimed and transformed 

44 



that wonderful wilderness of prairie and mountain waste into 
settled communities and prosperous states and homes. They 
were the homebuilders of the mighty West, and within our time 
they have transformed that wild western country into one of the 
most prosperous productive and rich countries on the face of the 
globe. Within our own time they have spread a network of 
magnificent avenues of commerce and communication over that 
entire country. Railways reach to every county seat, and cities 
and town and villages have gone up, and the undeveloped re- 
sources that have lain dormant for thousands of years have been 
developed and the wealth rolled out in such quantities as never 
before blessed a people in any part of the country. 

We have been fortunate in preserving this republic, pre- 
serving our system of government and preserving our institu- 
tions. You saved the Union; you have built it up and made it 
prosperous and made it glorious during the last fifty years. But 
we are indebted to our fathers, who wrought such a system of 
government more than a hundred years ago. With consummate 
wisdom and sagacity those pioneers and hardy settlers of Ameri- 
ca contended against the most powerful nation in the world, and 
after seven long years they achieved their independence and 
formed a constitution that has been acknowledged the world 
over as the wisest and best work of human wisdom. Washington 
wrote to Lafayette, saying: "We believe we have formed the 
best constitution ever created by human wisdom." And he did 
not say that "we will force that system of government upon 
other peoples, no, but he did say that "we hope it will be admin- 
istered with such wisdom and integrity that in time the 
people of this country shall have the glory of commending it to 
the peoples of the world who are now strangers to it." 

That prayer and hope of Washington has been fulfiled. 
There is not a government on earth that is not more liberal now 
than it was when those words were written; and a number of re- 
publics, not only in the western hemisphere, but in Europe, that 
have been established and are now in existence, have been the 
result of following our example. Withing the last few months 

45 



the mobt wonderful achievement in poHtical affairs has been 
wrought by the people of the Orient. Four hundred and fifty 
millions of the human race, living under the most autocratic and 
aristocratic power, have said, "We have had enough of this 
aristocratic andtyrannical government; we will have a constitu- 
tional monarchy." But when they had a taste of that, they were 
not satisfied, they said, "That will not do, we will have a Re- 
public, and will copy it after the great Republic of America," 
and today the greatest republic of the world's history is now 
established by the people of that far distant country in the 
Orient. 

What you have accomplished, my comrades, is not all. 
During the last half century, with all our prosperity and with 
all our progress and development, we have seen a few threatening 
times. In my judgment we are in the midst of one now. We 
are told by certain people that the Constitution under which our 
people have been blessed for one hundred and thirty years is 
defective, that it should be so modified that it can be elastic, 
shifted and changed by the vote of the people or perhaps a part 
of the people; and then we are told that the country ia in a ter- 
rible condition, and ought to be changed, we ought to have a 
political revolution. My friends, if you would journey with me 
around the world, and look at the people of the great Empire of 
China, strugj^ling seventeen hours a dny for five cents worth of 
rice, whose sole ambition is to get enough to preserve life, whose 
struggle is for an existence; if you were to cross Siberia and 
Russia, you would find a nation of one hundred and thirty mil- 
lions of people living in the gloom of darkness, only five per 
cent, able to read, and the price of labor only about twenty cents 
a day, in the south of Europe about thirtj'-five cents a day, in 
England, Germany and France about half what it is here. Go 
to Germany, the most progressive nation of Europe, and 3 ou 
will find the labor in the fields and the building of buildings and 
the construction of roads all done by the women, while the men 
are engaged in the-military service of the empire. Then j'ou 
come back to America, and what do you find today? Every mill, 
ever factory, every foundry, every place of industry running ou 

46 



full time, they can't get all the laborers that they want, all la- 
borers who wish to labor well paid, paid' double what they are 
in any other country, better housed, better fed, better conditioned 
than the people of any other country. And if we have 
little misfortunes or troubles, let us settle them in a legitimate 
way under the old Constitution. It was good enough for our 
fathers [applause] , it is good enough for us, it is good enough 
for those who shall follow us. Those who made it provided a way 
in which it could be amended if need be, and it has been amended 
a number of times. And the same way with the constitutions 
of the states; with consummate wisdom they separated the gov- 
ernment into three coordinate branches, that one should be a 
check upon the other; and also they left as little power in the 
central government as possible; they gave to the states all the 
power that was possible, in order that the communities might 
be governed by their own immediate governments. That was 
consummate wisdom, that one hundred years of prosperity, hap- 
piness and peace has proven to be the fact. And now let us not 
change that and concentrate all the power of the government at 
Washington and in the hands of a commission to be appointed 
by one man. [Applause.] We are not ready for a dictator or a 
despotism or a despot. [Applause.] And I hope that everj' 
man, whether he wear the blue or whether he wear the gray, 
will protest against these visionary theories, these heresies that 
we hear of today. It would be a strange thing in history — I 
couldn't help but think of it when our eloquent friend from Ken- 
tucky was speaking to you — it would be a strange thing if this 
country should be saved within the next month by the men that 
were our enemies fifty years ago, and I should not be surprised 
to see it accompli.^hed. I glory in their patriotism, I glory in 
their devotion to the true principles of our government as estab- 
lished by Washington and Jefferson, atid other patriots that luve 
occupied that high and exalted position since" 

47 



I beg your pardon, friends, for referring to matters which 
might seem a little out of order, but I was asked to say a few 
words upon the subject of "Our Country", that is nearest my 
heart, and you will pardon me if I say what is foremost in my 
thoughts, and that is the future prosperity and security and per- 
petuity of our country. And I trust that every man here who 
has a vote or can exercise any influence, will be active in pre- 
serving what you fought for during four years of war, and what 
you have maintained for fifty years since; and I trust that you 
have no sympathy with the ideas that we must change just to 
gratify the ambition of one or two or a few ambitious men. 
[Applause.] Let us preserve our institutions, let us preserve 
our system of government in all its beneficence, in all its mag- 
nificence, in all its grandeur, all its power and all its maturity, 
and hand it down to those that shall follow; and let up preserve 
our flag that we love so well, and hand that down to our de- 
scendants; as we received it from the fathers without a rent, let 
us hand it down without a stain. I wish you all prosperity and 
happiness. [Applause.] 

After singing "America" the exercises closed. 



4ii 



I TRRARY OF CONGRESS 

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